Coronavirus: India records biggest spike yet, 2,95,041 cases, 2023 deaths

Srinagar: The biggest daily increase yet in India, 2.95 lakh cases of the coronavirus and 2,023 deaths were reported in the 24 hours ending 9 am Wednesday.

Wednesday’s report takes India’s Covid-19 tally to 1,56,16,130, and total death toll of 1,82,553, The Indian Express reported.

With 21,57,538 active cases across India, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, addressed the country on Tuesday night, requesting states to use lockdown as a last resort. Modi urged to focus only on micro-containment zones.

Taking a dig at Modi’s address, former Chief Minister of Jammu and Kashmir Omar Abdullah said that ‘ PM Modi’s address reads as an admission that COVID wave 1 centralised response, including national lockdown, didn’t work.”

“Wave 2 response is now a state problem further decentralised to mohala committees. What a difference a year makes,” Abdullah wrote on his twitter handle.

In Jammu and Kashmir administration on Tuesday extended the ongoing night curfew to all municipal and urban local body limits in view of the spike in COVID-19 cases.

The order and guidelines related to the curfew were announced by the Lieutenant Governor’s office in a series of tweets.

“Only 50 per cent shops in market complexes/bazaars/malls within the municipal limits/urban local body limits shall be open on an alternate basis through a rotation system,” it said in another tweet.

It directed all the district magistrates to devise a mechanism to implement this, “preferably in consultation with local market associations”.